Summary The cultural revolution was the worlds most extraordinary political upheaval in the twentieth century. This revolution was centred around Mao and his ambitions concerning both his personal power and his revolutionary ideals, and to overcome these ambitions meant that he had to over come his opponents. Mao saw that his China was turned away from the revolutionist road road, but it was more of a question of maintaining the faith in the future of egalitarian socialism. Mao also felt that there was something that had to be done to counter his opponents which included Liu Shaoqi, Liu had been watering down Mao’s revolutionary proposals and Deng Xiaoping who had suspiciously remarked that it didn’t matter what colour the cat was as long as it caught mice. The struggle within the leadership spread to the universities in May 1966 and to the workers at the end of 1966. Mao unleased which could not easily be controlled, even by himself. Questions later arose about this cultural revolution which where, was the cultural Revolution primarily a struggle for power between Mao and his opponents, or was Mao genuinely committed to reversing the evolution of a ne self-interested bureaucratic class and the trend since the Great Leap to dilute socialism?
How did it begin?
There is no doubt that it started out of the disagreements which Mao was having with his colleagues in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward. Mao was very suspicious and resentful of the Party leaders and bureaucrats who while giving him the respect due to a dead ancestor, were making revisionist inroads into his ideal of a revolutionary state on the road to communism.
Background
Mao Zedong or Mao Tse-tung was the founding father of the communist revolution of the people’s republic of China and his style of government was autocratic which is a ruler that has full power of their people. Maoism was known as Mao’s theories which was developed with the theory of Marxism and Leninism which included military strategies, and political policies. Mao was born and his family was a very wealthy family of farmers in Shaoshan, Hunan, Mao also adopted Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism in his early life, which later influenced the events of the Xinhai revolution of 1911 and the May Fourth Revolution of 1919. While Mao was working at Peking University which later resulted to him become the founding father of the Communist Party of China, and during the civil war between the Guomindang and the CPC which later resulted in Mao discover the Red Army which led the Jiangxi Soviet’s radical land policies and ultimately became the head of the CPC during the long march which was how Mao came into power. October 1st, 1949, Mao proclaimed that the Peoples Republic of China would be a one-part state and be controlled by the CPC, and in the year to come after that Mao solidified his control over China through land reforms campaigns against landlords and enemies of the states which he referred to them as counter revolutionists. The Great Lead campaign which its ultimate goal was to rapidly transform China’s economy and this changed their economy from a agrarian one to a industrial one. The campaign was supposed to be a good one but it actually resulted in around 15-45 million lives which were lost, the death toll was so high because of the widespread famine that China was suffering. Mao made an attempt to remove the “anti-revolutionary” elements of the Chinese society in which he created the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which lasted about 10 years and was classes as a violent class struggle and widespread destruction of cultural artifacts were destroyed. Even though Mao’s policies and ideals were the cause of millions of deaths in China, Mao is actually regarded one of the most important individuals in modern world history because Mao is considered as a theorist, military strategist, poet and a visionary. Mao was credited because he drove imperialism out of China, and modernising China into building it into a world power, which consisted of Mao promoting the status of woman, improving education and health care, and increasing life expectancy as China’s population grew from around 550 million to over 900 million during his time in power over China. Mao came into power and became the ruler of China because he started the Long March which was a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army which Mao founded, they used this to evade the pursuit of the Kupmintang army. Even though it was called a long march it wasn’t all one march but a matter of fact it was several marches which contributed together and became the long march. The best known march was from Jiangxi province and that was commenced in October 1934. The communists escaped in a circling retreat to the west and north, it was documented that the journey was about 9,000 kilometres in over 370 days. It was proven very difficult for the soldiers to do this long march simply because the route included some of the most difficult terrain of western China. The Long March was the beginning of Mao’s rise into leadership, during the retreat, Mao gained support of the members of the party.
Implications:
Modern China was affected by the government because it was still a communist one, although Mao isn’t the leader of China anymore. China still isn’t peaceful because of communism but at least its not as bad as when communism was just introduced to China because of the famine that was spread across all of China. Some other long term events that took place in which communist brought to China was strong central government and extreme censoring. Some of the short term effects that Mao had on China was that the famine was spread across China, there was an increase in farm output and that there were cults that were worshiping him.
Sources: Following the success of the October revolution in the former Russian Empire, in which Marxists took power, the reason why that Mao Zedong started the long march in which led to him becoming the Leader of China. Then after he became the founding father of Communism, but this introduction to communism by Mao was influenced by Karl Marx (left) and Vladimir Lenin (right).
the Peoples Republic of China was established on October 1, 1949. Over that two decades of civil and international wars it became culminated. In this source it shows Mao speaking to his people of China and that he declared the founding of the modern People’s Republic of China, where he stated his famous phrase, “The Chinese people have stood up”.
In January 1958, Mao launched the second Five Year Plan known as the Great Leap Forward, a plan that was actually intended as an alternate model for economic growth to the Soviet model focusing on heavy industry that was advocated by others in the party. In this source it shows Mao having a dinner with Nikita Khrushchev, Ho Chi Minh and Soong Ching-ling during a state dinner in Beijing in 1959.
Mao to this day still remains as a controversial figure even though there were little disagreements over his legacy both in China and overseas. Generally, supporters credit Mao and praise him for having unified China and for ending previous decades of civil wars. This source shows that a photo of Mao himself in which is still up on the wall of Tiananmen.
1. The statement “Cold War? Heck, it was a hot war” in which the US secretary of defence, Robert McNamara said remains to be incorrect. This is so because the Cold war was the tense relationship between the United States and the the Soviet Union between the end of World War II and the demise of the Soviet Union. The Cold war want a heated battle because a heated battle would be much violent in the terms that there would be many more battles, death counts rising through the the wars and also there would be more cruelty within the soldiers. For example, the Vietnam war was a very heated war because of the attitudes of American soldiers in which they had which was all contributing to the brutality and the way in which the Vietnam war went by. The Cold War war was mostly little proxy battle in which weren’t heated enough to be called a “hot war”.
2. In personal opinion I think that the Cold War is very notable to be remembered because of the events in which occurred with in the very long time period. This is because some of the most significant events happened which consisted of the Vietnam War, checkpoint Charlie and many other events. The Cold War is also very memorable because of the amount of controversy that it hosts. For example, many historians have argued the duration in which the War went on for. Many historians argued in their own writing pieces that the war went on for more than 40 years because of the unofficial date in which it all ended. Even though most historians argue that the Cold War went for 40 years, the minority of the historian that write about the Cold War suggest that the Cold War still is going on even though there isn’t much going on in terms of war.
Biblio details:
Walsh, B. GCSE Modern World History 2nd ed
Hodder Education, London, 2001
Notes:
A useful text for Year 11 History which utilises source material in a good learning way. While it has a strong British orientation it does look at the Cold war from two perspectives.
Biblio details:
China under Communism, Alan Lawrence, published 1998
Mao Zedong
Summary
The cultural revolution was the worlds most extraordinary political upheaval in the twentieth century. This revolution was centred around Mao and his ambitions concerning both his personal power and his revolutionary ideals, and to overcome these ambitions meant that he had to over come his opponents. Mao saw that his China was turned away from the revolutionist road road, but it was more of a question of maintaining the faith in the future of egalitarian socialism. Mao also felt that there was something that had to be done to counter his opponents which included Liu Shaoqi, Liu had been watering down Mao’s revolutionary proposals and Deng Xiaoping who had suspiciously remarked that it didn’t matter what colour the cat was as long as it caught mice. The struggle within the leadership spread to the universities in May 1966 and to the workers at the end of 1966. Mao unleased which could not easily be controlled, even by himself. Questions later arose about this cultural revolution which where, was the cultural Revolution primarily a struggle for power between Mao and his opponents, or was Mao genuinely committed to reversing the evolution of a ne self-interested bureaucratic class and the trend since the Great Leap to dilute socialism?
How did it begin?
There is no doubt that it started out of the disagreements which Mao was having with his colleagues in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward. Mao was very suspicious and resentful of the Party leaders and bureaucrats who while giving him the respect due to a dead ancestor, were making revisionist inroads into his ideal of a revolutionary state on the road to communism.
Background
Mao Zedong or Mao Tse-tung was the founding father of the communist revolution of the people’s republic of China and his style of government was autocratic which is a ruler that has full power of their people. Maoism was known as Mao’s theories which was developed with the theory of Marxism and Leninism which included military strategies, and political policies. Mao was born and his family was a very wealthy family of farmers in Shaoshan, Hunan, Mao also adopted Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism in his early life, which later influenced the events of the Xinhai revolution of 1911 and the May Fourth Revolution of 1919. While Mao was working at Peking University which later resulted to him become the founding father of the Communist Party of China, and during the civil war between the Guomindang and the CPC which later resulted in Mao discover the Red Army which led the Jiangxi Soviet’s radical land policies and ultimately became the head of the CPC during the long march which was how Mao came into power. October 1st, 1949, Mao proclaimed that the Peoples Republic of China would be a one-part state and be controlled by the CPC, and in the year to come after that Mao solidified his control over China through land reforms campaigns against landlords and enemies of the states which he referred to them as counter revolutionists. The Great Lead campaign which its ultimate goal was to rapidly transform China’s economy and this changed their economy from a agrarian one to a industrial one. The campaign was supposed to be a good one but it actually resulted in around 15-45 million lives which were lost, the death toll was so high because of the widespread famine that China was suffering. Mao made an attempt to remove the “anti-revolutionary” elements of the Chinese society in which he created the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which lasted about 10 years and was classes as a violent class struggle and widespread destruction of cultural artifacts were destroyed. Even though Mao’s policies and ideals were the cause of millions of deaths in China, Mao is actually regarded one of the most important individuals in modern world history because Mao is considered as a theorist, military strategist, poet and a visionary. Mao was credited because he drove imperialism out of China, and modernising China into building it into a world power, which consisted of Mao promoting the status of woman, improving education and health care, and increasing life expectancy as China’s population grew from around 550 million to over 900 million during his time in power over China. Mao came into power and became the ruler of China because he started the Long March which was a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army which Mao founded, they used this to evade the pursuit of the Kupmintang army. Even though it was called a long march it wasn’t all one march but a matter of fact it was several marches which contributed together and became the long march. The best known march was from Jiangxi province and that was commenced in October 1934. The communists escaped in a circling retreat to the west and north, it was documented that the journey was about 9,000 kilometres in over 370 days. It was proven very difficult for the soldiers to do this long march simply because the route included some of the most difficult terrain of western China. The Long March was the beginning of Mao’s rise into leadership, during the retreat, Mao gained support of the members of the party.
Implications:
Modern China was affected by the government because it was still a communist one, although Mao isn’t the leader of China anymore. China still isn’t peaceful because of communism but at least its not as bad as when communism was just introduced to China because of the famine that was spread across all of China. Some other long term events that took place in which communist brought to China was strong central government and extreme censoring. Some of the short term effects that Mao had on China was that the famine was spread across China, there was an increase in farm output and that there were cults that were worshiping him.
Sources:
Following the success of the October revolution in the former Russian Empire, in which Marxists took power, the reason why that Mao Zedong started the long march in which led to him becoming the Leader of China. Then after he became the founding father of Communism, but this introduction to communism by Mao was influenced by Karl Marx (left) and Vladimir Lenin (right).
the Peoples Republic of China was established on October 1, 1949. Over that two decades of civil and international wars it became culminated. In this source it shows Mao speaking to his people of China and that he declared the founding of the modern People’s Republic of China, where he stated his famous phrase, “The Chinese people have stood up”.
In January 1958, Mao launched the second Five Year Plan known as the Great Leap Forward, a plan that was actually intended as an alternate model for economic growth to the Soviet model focusing on heavy industry that was advocated by others in the party. In this source it shows Mao having a dinner with Nikita Khrushchev, Ho Chi Minh and Soong Ching-ling during a state dinner in Beijing in 1959.
Mao to this day still remains as a controversial figure even though there were little disagreements over his legacy both in China and overseas. Generally, supporters credit Mao and praise him for having unified China and for ending previous decades of civil wars. This source shows that a photo of Mao himself in which is still up on the wall of Tiananmen.
Timeline:
http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/1324019
Part 3:
Hodder Education, London, 2001